In the morning the snow had stopped, and he got up, saddled the horse, and used the end of a log to break up his bonfire and shove the coals and burning wood out onto the ice of the brook, where it fell through. Then he mounted up and rode along his side of the brook, which at least offered him a road through the trees.
Something brushed his shoulder, and shot along in front of him. Owl had turned up, after two nights and a day, and continued remarkably well behaved until the sun was high, after which he disappeared again, faithless bird.
Elfwyn decided he could be as obstinate as that. He stopped, got off the horse, and waited, sitting, wrapped in his cloak, on a relatively warm fallen log until Owl decided to show up again. He was feeling quite pleased with his management of calamity, sure that Owl would come back, and having slept well enough and eaten a bit of a breakfast. Paisi, he thought, again, would be proud of him; and he was more and more anxious to get home again and tell Gran what he had seen and have her word on things—she and Paisi both had known Lord Tristen, and would want to know everything, every tiniest thing.
After he had gone to Lord Crissand, that was, and—
He had a terrible thought, and looked in his purse, which was empty of everything but his fire kit and a little willow bark; and felt about his person— he remembered putting it into his shirt—but he had had every stitch of his clothing off in that terrible hour, and he had been shaking all over, numb, and the wind had been blowing, so he would never have felt a little thing like a letter fly away from him.
It was a day behind him, that place, and he had no idea now how to find the fire site, or how he would find a scrap of paper in a snowfall. The snow had covered everything. He had been so pleased with himself for staying warm, and never once thought of the message he was carrying, never once put it in a safer place after he had tucked it inside his shirt that morning he had left.
Fool! he said to himself, distraught. Fool! So smug, so sure… and it’s gone.
He sat there, however, having no other answer and no rescue for his folly. Owl came back, perched smugly on a branch nearby, waiting for him.
“I’ve lost it,” he said aloud to Owl. “What shall I do? Can you tell him?”
Owl paid no attention at all, but took wing before he had quite gotten back into the saddle.
He had to get back to Gran and Paisi and get their advice about the message he had lost.
But what would Lord Tristen’s message have said? It surely advised Lord Crissand of what Tristen had already said to him, that he intended to ride out and probably pay Lord Crissand a visit—that, at least, he knew, and he could at least advise Lord Crissand that there would be a visit.
And then he had a reason to ask Gran if she could See what Lord Tristen was up to—because he ached to know when Tristen would ride out, and whether that riding out had to do with him. He had had a kindly welcome at Ynefel, no question—but Lord Tristen had looked into matters, as he had said, then decided to send him out first in some degree of haste.
That haste, he had denied to himself for the last several days, but haste it was—urgency was certainly what he had felt in his dismissal.
Well, Guelenfolk had certainly wanted him gone from their premises, which, now that he was gone, probably made things easier for his father.
He would never expect that a place like Ynefel and a Sihhë-lord should have any fear of him at all—but why, then, had Lord Tristen decided there was so much hurry about dismissing him?
That was what it had seemed to him, that at first Lord Tristen had been preparing to have him stay in Ynefel keep a few days, and then something had changed, and Tristen had flung him out onto the road into a coming storm.
Surely Lord Tristen, who could look out into Amefel and Guelessar, could have watched over him, right on his doorstep. Instead, Owl had run off at the very worst moment and left him, as if the bad luck that attended him was too much even for Owl to overcome, because he was a wicked boy, bent on ducking himself in a brook and losing a message Lord Tristen had meant to send…
Maybe he was truly cursed from birth, the way the Guelenfolk thought. Tristen had told his father not to kill him—but Tristen had told his father not to kill his mother, either, and everybody agreed his mother was the wickedest woman that ever lived, so that was no recommendation.
So what was he? And why were people everywhere he went so much better off without him?
He felt cold despite the cloak and the horse’s warmth, chilled right to the heart.
Tristen hadn’t been willing to teach him wizardry. Maybe he had been too dangerous, too evil to teach—though Tristen had seemed to consider it moderately, and had shown him wards, and when he had done them—which was wizardry, was it not?—they had clearly worked.
So maybe he wasn’t irredeemably wicked. Lord Tristen might be testing him, whether he could overcome his birth.
He hadn’t done well so far, losing the message… but he knew it now, and it was no time to sit on his hands and mope, as Gran would say.
Telling the truth to Lord Crissand was the most urgent thing, and when Tristen did come to Henas’amef he would go to him at the first chance and confess outright that he had lost the message. Tristen had dealt with him kindly, even if he had stripped his comfortable name away from him and told him to carry the one he was born with: it didn’t mean that he was damned. It meant that he was no longer a child, and he had to be a man, and deal with that name.
Be Mouse, Tristen had advised him, and not Owl.
Timid and brave, like Mouse. Wise, like Mouse. Not fierce and faithless, like Owl. He would not have understood that about those two creatures if he hadn’t visited Ynefel and seen how they were. He wouldn’t have thought twice about them if Tristen hadn’t made him stop and think about their natures, and his—and he’d not been able to kill the fish, had he?
That had been a test. He knew that now. He’d doubted it when they’d had fish for dinner, all the same, but Tristen had said something about its being all right to be Owl, but not at all right for him…
Which meant Tristen had seen some virtue in him, had he not? And Lord Tristen had, after all, taught him wards, and given him the fire kit, last of all. Tristen had given him exactly what he needed and left him to rescue himself.
What were his two words, that Tristen had given him, that he had to gain for himself?
Vision was one. Clearly, if he’d been looking at what he was doing, he wouldn’t have ridden his horse onto thin ice. If he’d Seen himself, stripping all his clothes off, or paid any attention to what fell on the ground, he wouldn’t have lost the letter, would he? Vision was something he’d needed to have, and hadn’t.
The other word was—
He could see Tristen telling him, but the image faded when he tried to think of that second word—it faded, like a dream by daylight, a simple word, an obvious word, the sort of word that anyone ought to possess. It was something he had, quite indignantly, thought he already possessed, but Tristen hinted he did not…
Love, might it be? He had wondered often enough in his life whether he had been loved enough, or by the right people. He had wondered whether he had enough of it, on his way to Ynefel.
Love was important, love from mother, or father, or brother—and the one he knew he had won, but one of the three he knew he never would, and the middle of the three, he doubted he had deserved. Love, but not yet from his father and certainly never from his mother. Tristen said whatever it was, that it was all-important for him… but was it love? Love was what he had been hoping for, lately.